Crossroads of Faith between China and Africa

Introduction

In the last two decades, two major trends have marked the rise of the study of non-Western believers in Christian history. One is the introduction of a new field of study, world Christianity in the field of church/mission history and theology. The second is the emergence of non-Western churches’ involvement in missions. Both correlate to the explosive demographic growth of Christianity in these parts of the world. However, there has been little theological interactions, such as partnership or mission in relation to African-Chinese relations in much writing or serious reflection.¹

This article explores what I (as a Chinese Pentecostal/charismatic believer) have observed are three major categories or themes that intersect and have special concerns in African and Chinese theology and missiology with hopes of stimulating future interactions for shared Christian life and ministry between the two: (1) family and names, (2) ancestors and the spirit world, (3) blessing and prosperity.

I will briefly survey some historical and contemporary global trends that are connecting African and Chinese to show the types of interactions that have occurred, proceed with the theological and missiological discussion, then conclude with a few thoughts.

The Historical and Contemporary Context for Chinese-African Interactions

Contact between Africa and China occurred from the fourth century BC to the thirteenth century AD through the Silk Route ² but even earlier, the “Han (202 BCE-220 CE) had been in contact with Africa” through trade.³ According to historian Anshan Li, in these early encounters, when the Chinese first met Africans, they judged them lacking in Chinese “moral virtue.” Later, when they enslaved and transported them to China, they treated them harshly, calling them “devil-slaves,” “wild men,” or “barbarian servants,” “treated them like beasts” and called them “the ugliest people in the world.” Conversely, the Chinese who had been to Africa were also enslaved and transported through the European slave trade in the sixteenth century.⁴

Africans were also found in junks sailing to China as early as 977 CE.⁵ Additionally, “between the eighth and tenth centuries, the Indonesian kingdoms of Sri Vijaya and Java had supplied African slaves to the Chinese courts.”⁶ So pronounced were such African presence in China that in the Tang era … a distinct literary tradition emerges in which the black [Africans] are central: “they speak Chinese, behave like Chinese and are treated by their Chinese owners with every sign of respect. [They] are no common servants. They are unfailingly heroic and resourceful. By Song times, the African … had a certain familiarity among the Chinese. They had become objects of awe, respect, and prosperity. Yet with the growing Arab trade and the increase in their numbers, like all commodities the values that had informed the … African, the black, the slave, shifted as well. They came to be characterized in the same manner that masters regarded most subject populations: servile and, many times, subhuman. However, the fact still remains: the African is present in China, present and affecting social, political-economic, literary, and cultural notions that characterize China during this period.⁷

In 1415, Zheng He (鄭和), China’s admiral (and representative of China’s version of Islam) sailed from China to land on Cape Verde, Kenya, Somalia, and the Maldives.⁸ By the end of his career, “Zheng He had successfully positioned China as the Middle Kingdom, with foreign powers as far away as east Africa viewed as vassal states required to pay regular tributes to the Ming court.”⁹

Fast forward to the twentieth-century, more African-Chinese contact occurred when European colonialism ended, and many African countries achieved independence. These nations later joined the Non-Aligned Movement, an association of around a hundred countries that occupied a middle political stance between the US and USSR during the Cold War between the 1960s and 1970s. China was not a member but an observer, exposing them to twentieth-century African economic and political realities. 

Since the 2000s, another initiative began, which opened wide doors for Chinese-African relations. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), an economic and developmental venture of the Chinese government, aimed to build closer ties between the two via strategic investments in large infrastructural projects by constructing new highways, rail systems, and high-tech digital telecommunications infrastructure. Since then, streams of Chinese construction workers, bankers, financiers, administrators, and shopkeepers have come to Africa in droves.¹⁰ At present, “two million Chinese have emigrated to Africa [and] Beijing’s long-term goal is to see 300 million Chinese people emigrate to Africa.”¹¹

Insofar as Christian encounters between African and Asian are concerned, “Chinese and Taiwanese churches are still limited in who they target for church membership, largely focusing on communities of diaspora Chinese based in Africa.”¹² Besides Protestant Christianity, Catholic interactions between Africans (from Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, and Kenya) and the Chinese in China have also occurred among those “who, as workers, students, diplomats or small businessmen, live in China and engage with local Catholics.”¹³

Today, there is even a Chinese house church movement in South Africa.¹⁴ Unsurprisingly, Chinese Christians and missionaries who now live and worship in Africa have been training Africans how to do missions. Conversely, African students have also studied in and interacted with diaspora Chinese populations in places like Malaysia and Singapore–worshipping and fellowshipping in English-speaking Pentecostal/charismatic churches or attending Pentecostal Bible colleges there.¹⁵

In light of the many African-Chinese Christian interactions, it is time to examine their theological and missiological issues so that they might not only begin to understand one another better, but grow in closer Christian fellowship, benefit one another with insights from their commonalities, and co-labor in mission to reach the other for Christ. 

For the Chinese church that looks to do missions overseas, it cannot overlook the increased African economic ventures and partnerships with the Chinese and great numbers of their workers in Africa. Thus, it is timely to explore joint theological and missiological concerns in African and Chinese Christianity so that both sides can formulate a good contextualized missional witness to the many Chinese workers who now reside there. Lastly, finding such common concerns not only mutually enriches one another’s understanding of Scripture, theology and mission, but it also helps both sides fulfill the Great Commission in the context of these relationships.   

In Part 2 of this subject, I will explore their commonalities in theology and missiology. It does so by examining key cultural and religious themes that are significant on both sides such as theology of (i) the family (and names), (ii) ancestors and the spirit world, (iii) blessing, prosperity, and healing. 

1. Some exceptions are Matthew Clark, “Asian Pentecostal Theology: A Perspective from Africa,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 4, no. 2 (2001): 181–199; Cheong Weng Kit, “Communion with Ancestor Spirits: Radical Syncretism or a Missing Element in the Theologising of Christian Spiritual Formation and Mission?” in Eric Trozzo, Cheong Weng Kit, and Joefrerick Ating, eds., Communion of Saints in Context: Theological, Pastoral and Missiological Perspectives from Asia and Oceania (Oxford: Regnum, 2020), 57–76; Cheong Weng Kit and Joy K.C. Tong, “The Localization of Charismatic Christianity among the Chinese in Malaysia: A Study of Full Gospel Tabernacle,” in Fenggang Yang, Joy K.C. Tong, and Allan H. Anderson, eds., Global Chinese Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity (Boston: E.J. Brill, 2017), 309–328.
2. Ta Sen Tan, Cheng Ho and Islam in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2009), 51. For the best work to date on Chinese movements to Africa, see Anshan Li, A History of Overseas Chinese in Africa to 1911 (New York: Diasporic Africa Press, 2012).
3. Maghan Keita, “Africans and Asians: Historiography and the Long View of Global Interaction,” Journal of World History 16, no. 1 (2005): 25. See also Li, A History, 18–19, on the range of possible dates, some predating the Han.
4. Li, A History, 1–2.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 26.
8. Tan, Cheng Ho, 164.
9. Imogen Lepere, “Zheng He, the Great Eunuch Admiral,” JSTOR Daily, May 13, 2024, https://daily.jstor.org/zheng-he-the-great-eunuch-admiral/ (accessed February 19, 2025).
10. Katy N. Lam, “Realising ‘Chinese Dream’: Chinese Migrants in West Africa,” in New Chinese Migrations: Mobility, Home, and Inspirations, eds. Yuk Wah Chan and Sin Yee Koh (New York: Routledge, 2018).
11. Wenhui Gong and Kenneth Nehrbass, “Reaching Out to Diaspora Chinese in East Africa: Barriers and Bridges,” Missiology 45, no. 3 (2017): 237, https://doi.org/10.1177/0091829617706981.
12. Kairu Wang, “East Asian Religious Presence in Africa: An Overview,” Critical Investigations into Humanitarianism in Africa, June 7, 2018, https://www.cihablog.com/east-asian-religious-presence-africa-overview/ (accessed February 14, 2024).
13. Antonio Spadaro and Michel Chambon, “African Influences on Chinese Catholicism,” La Civiltà Cattolica, August 20, 2020, https://www.laciviltacattolica.com/african-influences-on-chinese-catholicism/.
14. S. Grant and C.J.P. Neimandt, “The Chinese House Church Movement in South Africa,” Koers Online 80, no. 2 (2015): 1–6, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2304-85572015000200003.
15. Weng Kit Cheong and Joy K.C. Tong, “The Localization of Charismatic Christianity among the Chinese in Malaysia: A Study of Full Gospel Tabernacle,” in Global Chinese Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, eds. Fenggang Yang, Joy K.C. Tong, and Allan H. Anderson (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 309–328.